Emotional Intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise, understand and manage emotions in ourselves and others.

The capability of people to perform work falls into three areas:

  • Technical skills - technical expertise (e.g. accountancy skills)
  • Intellectual capability - commonly known as IQ, or cognitive abilities
  • Emotional capability - often referred to as emotional intelligence or EI

IQ versus EI

In professional and technical fields the typical entry-level threshold IQ is 110 to 120. Since everyone is in the top 10% or so of intelligence, IQ itself offers relatively little competitive advantage.

EI on the other hand can be learned at any age. Growing your competency in EI takes perseverance in critical self-evaluation, commitment to improvement and behavioural practice.

The Four Quadrants of Emotional Intelligence

Goleman's Emotional Intelligence Model showing four quadrants: Self-Awareness and Self-Management under Self category, Social Awareness and Relationship Management under Social category. The model illustrates the complete framework of emotional intelligence competencies organized by personal versus social focus and recognition versus regulation abilities.

Goleman's Emotional Intelligence Model (2002)

1. Self-Awareness

The core of Emotional Intelligence is self-awareness. The starting point and key is the ability to be critically self-reflective.

This is the ability to recognise & understand your emotions as well as the impact they have on work performance & relationships.

This includes:

  • Knowing which emotions you are feeling and why.
  • Realizing the links between your feelings and what you think, do and say.
  • Understanding your motivational structures.
  • Understanding how your behaviour changes relative to your perceived circumstances.
  • Recognising how your feelings affect your performance.
  • Being guided by your values and goals.

This is the ability to give a realistic evaluation of your strengths and limitations.

This includes:

  • Being aware of all your strengths and weaknesses.
  • Being reflective and learning from those experiences.
  • Being open to candid feedback, new perspectives, continuous learning, and self-development.
  • Show a sense of humour and perspective about yourself.

This is the ability to have a positive and strong sense of one’s self-worth.

This includes:

  • Presenting yourself with self-assurance and having “presence”.
  • Inspiring confidence in others and willing to take on new challenges.
  • Voicing views that are unpopular and go out on a limb for what is right.
  • Being decisive and making sound decisions despite uncertainties and pressures.

2. Self-Management

Self-Management is comprised of five competencies:

This is the ability to keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control.

This includes:

  • Managing your impulsive feelings and distressing emotions well.
  • Controlling your moods and behaviour.
  • Staying composed, positive, and unflappable even in trying moments.
  • Thinking clearly and stay focused under pressure.

This is the ability to maintain standards of honesty and integrity, and manage yourself and responsibilities.

This includes:

  • Acting ethically and above reproach.
  • Building trust through reliability and authenticity.
  • Admitting their own mistakes and confronting unethical actions in others.
  • Taking tough principled stands even when they are unpopular.
  • Meeting commitments and keep promises.
  • Holding yourself accountable for meeting your objectives.
  • Being organised and careful in your work.

This is the ability to be flexible in adapting to changing situations and overcoming obstacles.

This includes:

  • Smoothly handle multiple demands, shifting priorities and rapid change.
  • Adapting your responses and tactics to fit fluid circumstances.
  • Being flexible in how you see events.

This is the guiding drive to meet an internal standard of excellence.

This includes:

  • Being results oriented, with a high drive to meet their objectives and standards.
  • Setting yourself challenging goals and taking calculated risks.
  • Pursuing information to reduce uncertainty and find ways to do better.
  • Learning how to improve your performance.
  • Persisting in seeking goals despite obstacles and setbacks.
  • Operating from the hope of success rather than the fear of failure.
  • Seeing setbacks as due to manageable circumstance rather than a personal flaw.

This is the readiness to seize opportunities and act.

This includes:

  • Being ready to seize opportunities.
  • Pursuing goals beyond what is required or expected of you.
  • Cutting through red tape and bend the rules where necessary to get the job done.
  • Mobilising others through unusual, enterprising efforts.
  • Seeking out fresh ideas from a wide variety of sources.
  • Entertaining original solutions to problems.
  • Generating new ideas.
  • Taking fresh perspectives and risks in their thinking.

3. Social Awareness

Social Awareness is comprised of three competencies:

This is the ability to understand others and take an active interest in their concerns.

This includes:

  • Respecting and relating well to people from varied backgrounds.
  • Understanding diverse world views and are sensitive to group differences.
  • Seeing diversity as opportunity, creating an environment where diverse people can thrive.
  • Challenging bias and intolerance.
  • Being attentive to emotional cues and listens well.
  • Showing sensitivity and understand others’ perspectives.
  • Helping out based on understanding other people’s needs and feelings.

This is the ability to read the currents of organisational life, build decision networks and navigate politics.

This includes:

  • Accurately reading key power relationships.
  • Detecting crucial social networks.
  • Understanding the forces that shape views and actions of clients, customers and competitors.
  • Accurately reading organisational and external realities.

This is the ability to recognise and meet customers’ needs.

This includes:

  • Understanding customer’s needs and matching them to services or products.
  • Seeking ways to increase customer’s satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Gladly offering appropriate assistance.
  • Grasping a customer’s perspective, and acting as a trusted advisor.

4. Relationship Management

The Social cluster of Relationship Management is comprised of seven competencies:

This is the ability to strengthen and support the abilities of others through feedback and guidance.

This includes:

  • Acknowledging and rewarding people’s strengths and accomplishments.
  • Offering useful feedback and identifying people’s needs for further growth.
  • Being a mentor, give timely coaching, and offer assignments that challenge and foster a person’s skills.

This is the ability to inspire and guide groups and individuals.

This includes:

  • Articulating and arousing enthusiasm for a shared vision and mission.
  • Stepping forward to lead as needed regardless of position.
  • Guiding the performance of others while holding them accountable.
  • Leading by example.
  • Readily making sacrifices to meet a larger organisational goal.
  • Finding a sense of purpose in the larger mission.
  • Using the group’s core values in making decisions and clarifying choices.
  • Actively seeking out opportunities to fulfil the group’s mission.

This is the ability to exercise a wide range of persuasive strategies with integrity, along with ability to listen and send clear, convincing and well-tuned messages.

This includes:

  • Being skilled at winning people over.
  • Fine-tuning presentations to appeal to the listener.
  • Using complex strategies like indirect influence to build consensus and support.
  • Orchestrating dramatic events to effectively make a point.
  • Effective in give and take, registering emotional cues in attuning their message.
  • Dealing with difficult issues straightforwardly.
  • Listening well, seeking mutual understanding, & welcome sharing of information fully.
  • Fostering open communication and stay receptive to bad news as well as good.

This is the ability to initiate new ideas and lead people in a new direction.

This includes:

  • Recognising the need for change and removing barriers.
  • Challenging the status quo to acknowledge the need for change.
  • Championing the change and enlisting others in its pursuit.
  • Modelling the change expected of others.

This is the ability to resolve disagreements and collaboratively develop resolutions.

This includes:

  • Handling difficult people and tense situations with diplomacy and tact.
  • Spotting potential conflict, bring disagreements out into the open, & help de-escalate.
  • Encouraging debate and open discussion.
  • Orchestrating win-win approaches and solutions.

This is the ability to build and maintain relationships with others.

This includes:

  • Cultivating and maintaining extensive informal networks.
  • Seeking out relationships that are mutually beneficial.
  • Building rapport and keeping others in the loop.
  • Making and maintaining personal friendships among work associates.

This is the ability to promote cooperation and to build teams.

This includes:

  • Balancing a focus on tasks with attention to relationships.
  • Collaborating, sharing plans, information, and resources.
  • Promoting a friendly, cooperative environment.
  • Spotting and nurturing opportunities for collaboration.
  • Modelling team qualities like respect, helpfulness and cooperation.
  • Drawing all members into active enthusiastic participation.
  • Building team identity, esprit de corps, and commitment.
  • Protecting the group and its reputation; sharing the credit.

Growing Emotional Intelligence

Growing your EI competencies requires transformational learning, which comes from using critical self-reflection.

The Three (3) Why Test

Effective critical self-reflection requires you to question yourself and your assumptions on an ongoing basis. Ask "Why" down three levels from the item you are analysing.

Example:
I have been asked to present a workshop to one hundred people on a subject I know very well, and I have said no.

  1. Why did I say no? Because I would not feel comfortable doing it.
  2. Why do you feel uncomfortable about doing it? Because I might look incompetent.
  3. Why do you feel you would look incompetent? Because people in the audience may know more than I do.

The answer to this question is based on assumptions, and we need to challenge these assumptions to check their validity.

The Emotionally Intelligent Organisation

An organisation with a high number of emotionally intelligent leaders, managers and critical professionals stands to be at the forefront of organisational practice and performance, and is more likely to be an employer of choice.

Effective leadership improves business performance and provides organisations with a competitive advantage.